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Do you already have a Facebook page for your small business, if not you should have one right now. Start then participating in groups which are related to your niche. Facebook groups helps promote products, support customers and much more. Here are some few tips on how you can get started.

Sell your products through Facebook group.

Sell products – In additional to your website you are now able to use Sell In Facebook Groups. Once you have created Sell in Facebook Group, you will see an option to ‘’Sell Something’’ in your facebook update. There are 2 different options 1. Sell Something 2. Start a discussion 3. Ask a question. Under the tab ‘’Sell Something’’ you have to fill out the form, Whatyou are selling, the price, location, description and you can add your product image.

Give customers access to a private as part of the package

Supplement Video – If you have a business that sell video training courses, give the customers who purchase it an access to a private Facebook group as a part of the package. You can also do this with your webinar courses or video instructions on how to use your products. This is a win-win situation, the customers can ask questions and get supplementary materials easily or you can easily offer supplementary materials for your customers. It also gives your small business opportunity to forge deeper connection to your customers and promote your other products and services.

Online chats support as a great customer service tool

Promote chats – Those who run online chat or discussion on either twitter and facebook page, may want to separate it from their business. You can do that through facebook group. It is a great way to promote upcoming webinars or product launch. And it is easier to keep the conversation focused on one or two related topics. Media chat is using their public group to share more information to their guests, offer member deals, or even shout out about new products and services.

Contribute your knowledge to one that already exist.

Establish niche expertise – Become a resource in your field or niche, this is one of the most interesting and trustworthy business strategy to use on Facebook group. Create a group and contribute your knowledge in your field to one that already exist. For example if you offer SEO services, you can look for other groups and ask to join this group and add your expertise into this group. Members can ask questions and you can answer if your business does offer what they are looking for. The key is to be a resource without self-promotion.

Collect honest feedback from your customers

You can test your existing customers, one way to do it is to start a Facebook group to use think-tank for your business. Create a secret Facebook group invite some of your loyal customers and openly discuss new ideas you want to implement in your business. Then gather ideas from your loyal customers. This type of Facebook Group provides and builds stronger relationship with your current customers, while you are helping your small business collect honest feedbacks.

Every business needs customer support

Every business needs to provide a customer support that can attend to customers’ needs and questions as soon as possible. This can be through a contact form which is great but could take a lot of time to attend to, or you can choose Facebook page or a secret Facebook group could be an option. The reason to start a secret Facebook group instead of closed or public one is because secret groups can’t be located in search or accessed via URL. Instead member has be to be invited to the group. This is for you to control over adding new members, and it protects your business in case you have unsatisfied customers. If you want to create a closed group, it is important that you state whom this group belongs to in the description. This will give more control over who to decline and approve.

Bring employees together on your Facebook group

For those small business whose business communicates primarily on Facebook, create a Facebook group that bring your team together. Create an internal Facebook group exclusively for your team, use it to communicate with your team. The channel can be for introducing new team member, sharing company updates and more. It is important if you decide to create Facebook group for your team, to have Social Media Policy and have your team agree to it. This way the private business discussion do not end up on public Social media channels.

One of the biggest challenge on marketing is creating enough content that will make your audience engage on social media and drive traffic to your blog. This is what most marketers tells us, so here are some tools that could help you with your content creation.

Research is the key to create interesting content

Hubspot Blog topic generator

This is basic yet effective tool if you are running out of ideas for your blog. You simply put in the keywords and the Blog Topic Generator gives you 5 ideas for topics.

Google

Google is also one of the most basic places where you can find the newest or trending contents. Put in your keywords and hit the tab blog and you will find the newest and trending posts in real time.

ContentIdeator

This is also a basic tool to generate content idea by simply typing in the keywords. The ContentIdeator will give you suggestions for article topics, this tool works similar way with Hubspot Blog Topic Generator

Create better headlines with these tools

Hubspot Blog Topic – Headlines are important to catch your audience attention, it has to be unique, relevant and interesting. It is a great idea to come up with 20 headlines and pick out the best one. Often times it is not easy to create headlines for one piece of content, to get some more or different headlines you can try Hubspot Blog Topic Generator or the Content Ideator. Simply type in the most important keywords from your article and see which headlines that fits best for your topic.

So will generate different headlines, which you can use to tweet or post with the same article, it is suggested that you tweet the same article using different headlines and see which headline worked better with your audience.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

This tool will help you analyze your headline, the best way to use this tool is to have an idea for your headline first, then this tool will analyze your headline based on some facts, like the kind of words used and the usage of basic phrases that could get more attention.

Emotional Marketing Headline Analyzer

This tool analyzes headline with the regard to the emotional marketing value, it states that most Copy Writers will score 30 to 40 % in the EMV value while the best copy writers will score 60 to 70 % EMV.

Create better content with these tools

Hemmingway App – The best content is usually the ones that are easy to read. Hemmingway helps you identify the parts of your contents that are hard to read and understand and gives you a better sentence.

Grammarly – Helps you identify sentence that are unnecessarily complicated.

Canva – Canva is easy to use and very straight forward tool to creating beautiful in exactly the right size. Canva can’t help you write better article but is a great tool for e.g. infographic and such.

There are many tools that you can use to create your content with interest and relevance, and also with uniqueness that will make you stand out from your competitors. However these tools mentioned above cannot help you make your audience be more engaged with your content, you need to come up with creative ways on how you can post your content that will catch your readers attention. These tools can simply be a guide to how you can create better headlines, create relevant and easy to understand content.

We offer content creation in a very affordable price, out content creators are well known to create relevant, unique and interesting articles for small businesses like yours. We can help you all you need to do is contact us.

We have been witness to content marketers that they are really good at what they do. They have established and processed techniques, tactics and strategies that works for us by borrowing tips and tricks and tools from content marketing pros. We tweak these elements to our own content marketing. However even the pros believe that we should always evolve as the internet and the interest of our target audience evolves.

We know content strategies can be scary elusive concept to someone who just getting started, so here we have gathered content marketers who can give us tips to form a content marketing guide,

The trick is the details

Content strategy does not mean we write about the same trending topics, it means educating our prospects, audience and customers the best way we can.

The trick is to be detailed with your content, with the right amount of keywords, tags and links. Give the audience answers that they need when they look for products and services.

Sean Work from Kissmetrics says : ‘’Content strategies means educating your audience the best way we can’’

Expose your content to new audience through guest blogging

Early on we were afraid of guest blogging, we wanted our best content on our own blog. As it actually turned out this was irrational and waste of good content. Guest blogging can help you gain new audience, when you run out of new content marketing strategies, you can ask a related small business to exchange contents with you, this can help both of you gain new customers or audience.

Alex Turnbull from Groove says ‘’ Guest blogging is the single best way to expose your content to huge new audience.’’

You have to trust the system that content marketing works and not get too discourage, when one post or 2 don’t do well as you hoped for. As long as you are creating remarkable content on a regular basis and promoting it in the right ways, you do not have to worry about shares, likes, traffic and subcribers.

When creating content prioritize your customers need

The first you need to prioritize when starting content marketing is your customers. Think of your target audience, their interests, what will make them smarter, happier and better.

So the main point is research makes the most of your content, great content is built from relentless research says Demain Farnworth from Copyblogger.

Great content is also built from fear, fear that you are creating shallow weak and unoriginal content, which drives customers to never satisfied.

Jason Miller says ‘’Organic is good but paid is better’’ Some people would like to think that organic posts on social are all they need to make a spark on engagement and get their message heard. But successful promotional strategy include paid placements. To grow you have to go outside your familiar community and involve with 2nd and 3rd degree connections.

Paying your own good content with social media advertising is essential so you can expand.

The biggest key to success early is simply writing a lot and learning to publish without fear – Garrett Moon from CoSchedule.

You need to have your content written for you, we can help you with the most affordable budget you can find online. Here is our contact details

If you own a local business, you already know how crucial it is to rank well on local search results. Internet has become the primary source for consumers to turn to when searching for local business information. When your local business does not turn up on local search results, it is tantamount professional suicide.

Here are some few tips on how you can shape your local SEO statistics and how you can prioritize your local business in terms of local search.

Local searches lead to 50% of mobile visitors to visit the local store within a day

Local searches tend to lead to action, as much as 50% of local searches using mobile visited a store within a day. And 34% using computer or tablet did the same. This means that ranking on local search has impact on in store traffic.

Get your business listed on major local directories such as Google or Yelp.

Make sure your NAP ( Name, Address and Phone number) is consistent across the channels, this should also include your social media sites, websites, blogs and review sites.

Use local business schema markup so Google can identify your location.

Use proper keywords, title tags, URL and content

Did you know most consumers have used local information in Ads?

Marketers found out that consumers have a clear preference when it comes to having ads customized to their surroundings.

67% of smartphone users want ads customized via city and ZIP code and 61% want Ads customized in their surroundings

61% use address or Phone number in their Ads

68% use ‘’Get directions’’ or ‘’Call’’ buttons

When targeting Ads for local consumers be sure to use Ads by Location. Adwords pulls your information from Google My Business setting, so make sure it is properly set up the way you want to appear it on your Ads.

Business Address or Location is primary piece of information sought by local searches

Using precise information on your local ads is important, it is also important to include key contact and location info on your website and social media profile.

Here are some other info searchers are looking for:

Category

Phone Number

Products and Services

Hours of operation

Driving directions

Coupons and special offers

Ratings and reviews

It is also important that your mobile content concise and actionable. Although do not overwhelm your mobile visitors with copious amount of info, but instead provide clear basic information and links as needed.

Online reviews are important for consumers, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Local business should be aware of the importance of positive online reviews, increasingly consumers turn to Google to get recommendations and referrals for local businesses.

Include these top review sites for your local business:

Yelp

Tripadvisor

Google+ Local

Yahoo! Local

Urbanspoon

Angie’s List

Local mobile searches leads to sale within a day

Above we have already discussed that local searchers are more likely to visit a store within a day, these consumers will likely make a purchase as well, when found a good positive review online about your local business.

There has been a lot of talk of which is better mobile app or mobile browser, according to Google research most consumers prefer mobile friendly browsers. Research reveals that half of mobile users prefer mobile friendly websites and only 10% uses mobile apps. If you haven’t optimized your website yet you may have dropped dramatically on your rankings and traffic since April 2015, the launch of Google’s mobilegeddon algorithm update. If you are not sure about this check out Googleøs mobile friendly test now.

Final Say

The importance of ranking in local search is undeniable, we have already seen how mobile searches has lead to sales and store visits.

Ensure that you have all your important information listed on local sites, you have your business listed on local directory sites and that you have all your contact information on your social media sites as well. Finally make sure that your website is optimized for mobile viewing.

Is your business yet to be updated to mobile friendly website, we can help you right now with the lowest budget you can find online. Here are our contact details:

Having multiple social media account is not enough to get your online business visible on the World Wide Web, every business owners knows it takes more just updates on status and shout outs. Sometimes it can be a bit frustrating that you do not get enough reactions from your thousand users, you want to be seen, you want your users to share your posts and mostly you want frequent engagement. Here are some awesome tips from other small business owners on how you can have your followers be more active and engage more on your social media accounts.

Let’s start with some interesting facts:

We found a survey online, which tells us which of the following have more engagement these are the results.

And a sadden truth of 17% said they do not know what they are doing online

So we have come up with 7 essential tips on how you can manage your social media efficiently

Create your social media marketing plan before you even start on social media marketing. Even when you start choosing your social media platforms, you need to think about purpose and strategy.

– What is your purpose with social media

– Who are your target audience

– What kind of company you want to be on social media

– Will your brand go for practical, non-sense approach to social media messaging or do you prefer a more easy going presence on social media

Each brand has a purpose so choose the right social media networks for your business

– Facebook has billion users but if your potential customers don’t make up the big part of that user base, then it is not the right social media channel for your business.

– If your business target B2B services then Linkedin would be a perfect place for you. But if your business revolves around marketing, Facebook ads or promoted tweets should be your first choice.

Save a tons of money customer service by using social media.

– On early days business needs to be have an open line of communication, it is crucial ass your ability to respond and incorporate their comments and suggestions on products and services can make or break your small business.

– Customer service representative can be very costly, therefore most small business owners turn to social media as their customer support platform, it is also cost efficient solution especially for those who just started their business.

– Using social media for customer service is very easy, making social media listening mandatory task in your daily social media tasks.

– Use social media tools such as Hootsuite, to set up search streams for your brand name and mentions in real time. You can also track the progress of your social media engagement using 3rd party tool such as Social Mention or native analytics tools in Hootsuite. These 3rd party tools can help you address customers’ positive and negative feedback as soon as possible.

Expand by recruiting team members to your social media accounts.

– A small business start-up audience is not limited to potential customers or investors, if your company is looking for passionate and talented to join your cause they can be found amongst your followers.

– Once you have an open position, make sure to spread the news.

– Try as much as possible to link your social media accounts with another to make sure that everyone can find which social media platform they prefer using.

Build an online community.

– Behind every successful social media marketing is a genuine human connection. You cannot just rely your social media to automatic scheduling, and leave it there. You need to show your social media audience the people behind the product and services you offer, let them know that there are actual people who work and serve for them.

Evaluate your social media strategy regularly

– Start-up companies can be overwhelmed by the fast pace and growth on social media once you have set up and started on your social media management routine, however it is very crucial that you also set up regular check ups for all your social media channels. Use tools such as Hootsuite Grade Your social media and SocialBro to evaluate your social media presence, reports on your engagement, reach and profile strengths.

Keep experimenting and be creative

– While you are very much comfortable with your social media routines, do not be afraid to experiment or come up with ideas on how to keep your audience interest. Everybody is encouraged to think outside the box, look for new exciting ways to keep your audience engaged, run a contest, share or create a funny video related to your business, create funny surveys or create awesome and mind blowing images.

With social media marketing there is no limit on your imagination on how you can keep your business and customers happy. It is crucial that you manage your social media with care and passion, as this could serve your business in the long run, with real time engagement on both negative and positive feedback from your target audience.

Will you ever need help to keep your social media marketing strategies at top, you can contact us for more details, we create marketing plan according to your budget and needs. See the contact details below. Let’s support one another.

Every startup business wants to be available in the virtual world. It is because the internet is where businesses mostly conduct their marketing activities these days. Well, making your business go live online is easy. You can even start it by creating social media accounts such as Facebook where you can create your own business page and start marketing. However, later on you will eventually realize that building an online presence is not that effective without having your own website.

A Website is an essential factor if you want to build your online brand. However, you might find website creation a little bit difficult. There is an overwhelming process when it comes to web designing. In order to have a website you need to buy a domain and create a catchy URL. But make sure that your URL is readable and is relevant to your business. Once your done setting up your domain then you are now ready to take the next step which is web designing. In addition, when it comes to website creation for small business you might want to consider these important features.

Navigation

Yes, it is very fatal for a website when it comes to navigation. If your website has a poor navigational structures then most probably visitors will not stay long. In fact, a website is considered useless without having a clear navigation. If you think that using clever or obscure design for your navigation will attract more visitors then you are wrong. It will only be a turnoff for most visitors because they will find it difficult to navigate your website.

Business Information

Most startup business tend to create a website focusing only to what they want and not considering what their website needs. Yes, it is good to know what you want for your website since it represents you and your brand but you should also consider what your website needs particularly valuable and crucial information about your business. For example, you want your product or service to be featured clearly on your home page in which you create a bigger icon for them without knowing that other important icons such as the “about page”, “blog page”, “contact information”, etc are not featured properly.

Mobile Ready

One of the latest trend when for businesses who owns a website these days is the mobile optimized website. With the rapid growth of Smartphone and tablet users all over the world the number of web users using these devices are also growing. Almost everyone is going mobile these days that is why it is important to consider optimizing your website for mobile users.

These are just few of the many important features that you need to get your attention with when creating awebsite design for small business. Fortunately, you can now get affordable website design package from trustworthy business consulting companies such as Socratic SBC. This way you can create the best website for your business and at the same time save time and money.

For more information about website creation and services contact us at.

Business plan consulting is now on top of the head of every entrepreneur. It is because when it comes to running a small business not everyone can handle all the tasks and future challenges alone. Majority of entrepreneurs understand that the flow of business is unpredictable. There will always be circumstances that you will be facing in the future. So, they are putting more effort on creating their business plan than ever before by way of hiring small business consultant.

Small business consultants are very in demand these days especially for small business owners. Aside from their capability to help small businesses create effective and reliable business plan they are also full of ideas and solutions to any situations or problems. Some entrepreneurs even outsource some of the main tasks on their business operation. You might think that these people are just too lazy or probably has more funds to hire a business consultant to help them on their small business operations. But the truth is, these people are just too wise and business minded because they totally understand the benefits of professional business consultants. For example, there is an important task that needs to be done but it is out of your expertise. Would you still do it by yourself knowing that you don’t have the right skills or knowledge to do so? If so just for the sake of saving money from hiring a consultant then you are taking a big risk.

Outsourcing some tasks in your business operation is not considered as laziness. In fact, it is considered as an investment or a solution to avoid potential errors in your business operations. But how will you know if you need a consultant for your business? The answer is simple; if you are seeking for the growth of your business then you need a business consultant. Now, how will you be able to find the best and the most trustworthy consultant to do business with? You just need to search for several business consultants in the web they could be an individual or a company.

However, I highly recommend you to choose a small business consulting company than the individual experts because you can save time and money by choosing them. Small business consulting companies such as Socratic SBC offers high quality professionals as well as affordable services and packages whereas individual experts only offers several services that is included in their line of expertise. In addition, individual experts could cost you more because their rate may vary depending on the difficulty or duration of the task that you want to outsource.

Overall, whatever service you need for your business whether if it is for your business plan or any other purposes, hiring a consultant is probably the best solution. So, if you are in need for a business consultation then we are here to help. Here are our contact details.

A lot of entrepreneurs, especially small business owners mistakenly thought that the purpose of business plan is just to have a roadmap for their business operations and goals. Yes, it is, but not just that. Abusiness plan your overall key to map up the future of your business, to support your business growth, to secure funding, to help manage your cash flows, and even to support you for an strategic exit. These are the main reasons why business planning is very important.

Roadmap for the future

One main reason why you need asmall business plan is to have a roadmap to the future of your business. By writing all your thoughts you will understand your business more. This will also help you to create courses of action in which you will be using to advance your business. A business plan for small business can help you have a detailed some alternative scenarios in the future as well as develop specific goals and objectives.

To Support your business growth and funding

In times of business growth you will be facing investment decisions. However, there are times that your cash flows alone can’t fund growth opportunities. You may need an external funding in this kind of situation. But getting funds from investors or lenders could be difficult especially with today’s highly competitive market for funding. Majority of investors or lenders will require you to provide the most recent income statements, profit statements, loss statements, and of course your updated business plan before deciding you lend you their money. This is why you need to have a good business plan to show them.

To have a better cash flow management

One of the most important requirements for all business is to have a proper cash flow management. Many small businesses fail because of the lack of cash flow management. Being unprofitable is not always the reason why businesses fail. Sometimes the reason for business failure is when they become insolvent. Cash flow management is very vital especially when your business is pursuing investment opportunities.

To have an strategic exit

We all know that not all businesses succeed or sustainable that is why even if you have a profitable business you will need a strategic exit plan. What you need to do is to liquidate all the investment in order for you to have the option of cashing out.

These are some of the main reasons why you need to create a business plan for your small business. Now, if you don’t have that much knowledge when it comes to business planning then all you needs to do is to find a reliable and trustworthy person or consultant to deal with it.

Socratic SBC is a reputable small business consulting company that offers high quality services in the most affordable rates. So, if you are in need of any services concerning business planning feel free to contact us. Here are our contact details.

Blogging these days has come into a whole new level compared to the early days. It is becoming more popular than ever before. In fact, you can find every business these days using blogs as their main marketing tool. According to some research, blogging has become one of the most valuable and effective tools that businesses used to engage with customers. If you don’t want to get left behind then you better start blogging and the best place to start it is through social media. So, if you want to boost your online presence and generate more traffic for your website then understand how content creation works and start blogging. Here are 6 common reasons why you should start blogging for your business.

Communicate With your customers

One great way to communicate with your customers is through blogs. It is the simplest and easiest way to connect as well as share relevant information with your customers in timely manner.

Boost Search Engine Rank

If you might not know, search engines give more importance to those who provide valuable content. Make sure your blogs contains valuable and relevant information for you to get high rank in search engines.

Share Your Expertise

Have you ever thought of a way to showcase your expertise other than blogging? These days the best way to showcase your expertise as well as leadership is trough blogging. You can do it by posting informative content on different social media platforms and blogging sites such as wordpress and hubsppot.

Builds Relationships and Sales

One way to build relationships to your customers is trough blogging. By providing them reliable and valuable information they will eventually consider you as a reliable resource and later on buy your products or avail your services.

Become more focus on your business

Blogging is not just about marketing, it is also a way to develop focus on your business. With more experience you will know who your target audience are which will then help you focus on the right area.

Cost Saving

This is one of the best reasons why you should consider blogging on your content marketing strategies. You don’t have to spend much money to market your business using blog. In fact, you just need to write valuable content for your blog and post it on all your channels with the need to spend money. But of course if you want to get quick results you can always avail some affordable service or tools that can help boost your reach.

Now that you know some of the reasons why blogging is an essential means for your business for sure you are now planning to start creating blogs. However, if you don’t know how to get started we are always here to help. Contact us now at.

One of the most effective and popular type of online marketing these days is content marketing. However, a lot of people mistakenly thought that it is just another type of online marketing strategy that uses blog and regular content posting. But the truth is, content marketing is available in different forms and has a dipper meaning than just blog and text post. Here are some of the most used forms of content marketing.

Videos

Videos are rapidly becoming more popular than ever before. It is said to be the perfect complement to online marketing. Regardless of what type of videos you produced whether if it is informative, instructional, fun, or pure promotional it is playing a big role in your marketing strategy. In fact, according to some report, there are over 70 percent of online marketers who are using videos in their online marketing activities. So if you want to compete with today’s hyper competitive market then you might want to consider video content marketing in your marketing plan.

Photos

Some marketers think that images are just a waste of space on the screen. They tend to focus on informative text rather than wasting room just to put a photo. Yes they may have some point but if you think about it in a reader’s prospective, would you honestly want to read lengthy articles or blogs without even a single image? I doubt it very much. If you might not know, images can make a difference for your content marketing strategy. As long as you know how to use it effectively then this will surely help boost your content marketing campaigns.

Case Studies

Another form of content marketing techniques is case studies. If you are a business owner, you know that you need to create and distribute valuable and relevant contents as means of marketing. Case studies are one of the best ways to do so. However, sometimes it could be difficult to create valuable and relevant contents for your content marketing strategy. But by doing research and getting consultation you may be able to produce case studies that can boost your online marketing efforts.

Inforgraphics

This form o content marketing is being widely used by entrepreneurs to convey information to their audiences. It is a visual representation of data, knowledge, and information. What makes inforgraphic an effective content marketing technique is its ability to make info more appealing, easier to understand, accessible, persuasive, and memorable.

These are just some of the many forms of content marketing. Knowing this valuable information will help you understand the true essence and value of content marketing. So, if you are looking for the right people that can help you on creating content marketing strategies for your brand then feel free to contact us. Here are our contact details.